Saturday, August 12, 2017

Phaedra (Phèdre) as Picture and Word

RomeBurial-chest with relief of Hippolytus and Phaedra
marbleBritish Museum

O shallop of Crete, whose milk-white wing
Through the swell and the storm-beating,
Bore us thy Prince's daughter,
Was it well she came from a joyous home
To a far King's bridal across the foam?
What joy hath her bridal brought her?
Sure some spell upon either hand
Flew with thee from the Cretan strand,
Seeking Athena's tower divine;
And there, where Munychus front the brine,
Crept by the shore-flung cables' line,
The curse from the Cretan water!

And, for that dark spell that about her clings,
Sick desires of forbidden things
The soul of her rend and sever;
The bitter tide of calamity
Hath risen above her lips; and she,
Where bends she her last endeavour?
She will hie her alone to her bridal room,
And a rope swing slow in the rafters' gloom;
And a fair white neck shall creep to the noose,
A-shudder with dread, yet firm to choose
The one way strait for fame, and lose
The Love and the pain for ever.

– from Hippolytus by Euripides, translated by Gilbert Murray (1902)

"Hippolytus was produced in 428, the third year of the Peloponnesian War, on one of four occasions during Euripides' lifetime when his entries won first prize. Subsequent ages, despite changes in critical fashion in the assessment of Euripides' work, have agreed in regarding Hippolytus as one of his masterpieces. But in spite of this consensus, there are sharp disagreements between critics about how the play is to be interpreted.

Hippolytus, illegitimate son of Theseus and the queen of the Amazons, is the special favorite of Artemis. He lives a life of chastity in the goddess' company and calls Aphrodite the basest of deities. To avenge this slight to her honor, Aphrodite uses her power as goddess of love to bring about his death by indirect means, a complicated but clearly foreseen chain of causality. She causes Theseus' wife Phaedra to fall in love with him. The passion is doubly discreditable, being both adulterous and quasi-incestuous, Hippolytus being her stepson.

One group of critics finds Hippolytus deeply flawed: he is foolish in his attempt to suppress sexual love in himself, arrogantly convinced of his superiority to the mass of mankind, intolerant of weakness in others, and warped by his fanatical misogyny. The first group of critics finds Phaedra a sympathetic character, since she resists the passion Aphrodite has inspired in her and causes Hippolytus' death only when stung by the injustice of his condemnation of her.

A second group reverses the judgments. For them Phaedra is weak and vacillating, she thinks too much about her good name and too little about the reality of virtue, and her failure to make the distinction between being and seeming virtuous betrays her into the unjust act of slandering Hippolytus. These critics regard Hippolytus in a sympathetic light: he is seen as single-minded in his devotion to Artemis and a man of integrity.

As regards the human figures, there is no reason to sympathize with one of them to the exclusion of the other. Both are victims of Aphrodite, as is Theseus. It is also a mistake to see the outcome of the play as the result of human shortcomings and to ignore the cardinal element of divine malice."

– from the introduction by David Kovacs to the most recent Loeb Classical Library edition of Euripides' Hippolytus (Harvard University Press, 1995)

Jean Racine (1639-1699) amplified the plot of Euripides' Hippolytus – adding characters and altering actions – mainly in order to enhance Phaedra's ethical position in relation to those around her and so permit a slightly larger sliver of nobility to her than Euripides could grant. Racine's Phèdre was first performed in 1677.

Phèdre: I have conceived just terror for my crime;
I hate my life, and hold my love in horror.
Dying I wish'd to keep my fame unsullied,
And bury in the grave a guilty passion;
But I have been unable to withstand
Tears and entreaties, I have told you all;
Content, if only, as my end draws near,
You do not vex me with unjust reproaches,
Nor with vain efforts seek to snatch from death
The last faint lingering sparks of vital breath.

Phèdre: Stay, Theseus!
Do not profane endearments that were once
So sweet, but which I am unworthy now
To taste. You have been wrong'd. Fortune has proved
Spiteful, nor in your absence spared your wife.
I am unfit to meet your fond caress,
How I may bear my shame my only care
Henceforth.

Marguerite Joséphine Georges (1787-1867) Actress; born Marguerite Joséphine Weimer, known as Mademoiselle Georges. Debut at the Théâtre Français in 1802. To St. Petersburg 1808-12. Retired in 1853. Mistress of Napoleon.

George CruikshankStudies of the actress Rachel as Phèdre
before 1858
drawingBritish Museum

George CruikshankStudies of the actress Rachel as Phèdre
before 1858
drawingBritish Museum

Elisabeth-Rachel Félix (1821-1858) Actress; stage name Rachel or Mademoiselle Rachel. Stage debut in 'La Vendéenne' at Théâtre du Gymnase, 1837; joined the Théâtre Français in 1838. Particularly associated with plays by French dramatists like Racine and Corneille. Had many lovers, among whom Louis Napoléon Bonaporte (the future Napoleon III), Joseph Charles Paul Bonaparte, and count Walewski (illegitimate son of Napoleon I), to whom she bore a son.

"The performance of Phèdre, given this afternoon before an enthusiastic audience, which included the foremost representatives of society and the arts, as well as the principal critics, was for Mme. Berma, who played the heroine, the occasion of a triumph as brilliant as any that she has known in the course of her phenomenal career. We shall discuss more fully in a later issue this performance, which is indeed an event in the history of the stage; for the present we need only add that the best qualified judges are unanimous in the pronouncement that such an interpretation sheds an entirely new light on the part of Phèdre, which is one of the finest and most studied of Racine's creations, and that it constitutes the purest and most exalted manifestation of dramatic art which it has been the privilege of our generation to witness."

– Parisian newspaper review "quoted" by Marcel Proust (or composed by him) for his fictionalized response to Sarah Bernhardt's Phèdre, as embedded in the second volume of Remembrance of Things Past, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff

William John Henderson after Georges ClairinPortrait of Sarah Bernhardt
1928
mezzotint
(reproducing a painted portrait of 1876)British Museum

COMRADES OF TIME

"Hesitation with regard to the modern projects mainly has to do with a growing disbelief in their promises. Classical modernity believed in the ability of the future to realize the promises of past and present – even after the death of God, even after the loss of faith in the immortality of the soul. The notion of a permanent art collection says it all: archive, library and museum promised secular permanency, a material infinitude that substituted for the religious promise of resurrection and eternal life. During the period of modernity, the 'body of work' replaced the soul as the potentially immortal part of the Self. . . . But today, this promise of an infinite future holding the results of our work has lost its plausibility. Museums have become the sites of temporary exhibitions rather than spaces for permanent collections. The future is ever newly planned – the permanent change of cultural trends and fashions makes any promise of a stable future for an artwork or a political project improbable."